Metered Internet usage (also called "Usage-Based Billing") is coming to Canada, and it's going to cost Internet users. While an advance guard of Canadians are expressing creative outrage at the prospect of having to pay inflated prices for Internet use charged by the gigabyte, the consequences probably haven't set in for most consumers. Now, however, independent Canadian ISPs are publishing their revised data plans, and they aren't pretty.

...

Starting on March 1, Ontario TekSavvy members who subscribed to the 5Mbps plan have a new usage cap of 25GB, "substantially down from the 200GB or unlimited deals TekSavvy was able to offer before the CRTC's decision to impose usage based billing," the message added.

I have yet to get a note from Bell Canada regarding my Internet plan, but I have no doubt there's one being drafted right now. Basically if you do any music downloading, Netflix, Apple Store shopping, YouTube, Skype, pretty much anything other than plain vanilla surfing and email, y'all are about to get CRUSHED. Obliterated. Stomped on.

The big question now is how these kind of billing changes will impact 'Net consumption patterns. Many subscribers use minimal data, but that's changing as Internet video becomes the norm. If these new plans simply discourage data hogs from backing up their 120GB pirated movie collection over the 'Net every night, there's no sleep to be lost. But if they scare consumers away from legitimate non-ISP affiliated movie and content sharing sites, that should be a firebell concern to consumers, entrepreneurs, and regulators.

Well, calling it a "question" is being overly generous. These regulations are obviously designed to protect entrenched interests, namely television networks, music labels, long distance carriers and the very lucrative video rental industry. That is their entire purpose, and the only reason for them to be implemented. The peasants (that's us) have been getting fractious with this new interweb thing, finding ways to get around paying astronomical sums for things like music, movies and long distance telephone service, so government will just have to step in and protect the profits of their good friends at Bell Telephone Company. And that my friends, in a nutshell, is what makes Canada SUCK. Bell Canada getting hurt by new technology, new consumer patterns? No problem, we'll just change the rules to frack over the business models of these upstarts, and then things will go back to the way they should be. Get those peasants back in line, by God. If you look into -any- field of endeavor in this country, from mining to manufacturing to education to publishing, you will find exactly this pattern of behavior. Ever wonder why there's no Canadian car companies to rival the Big Three? Because once upon a time the Big Three got a Special Deal, that's why. Why's there no private universities? Special Deal. Why our movies and music and radio and TV and books are all such gawdawful liberal crap? Special Deal. Why we pay FOUR TIMES AS MUCH for cell phones here as they do in the States? Special. Freaking. Deal.

Time to call our MPs again and make another USELESS protest against the inevitable, I suppose. This is one example of action by the Conservative government that would have been no worse and really no different under the Liberals or even the NDP. The Ottawa Mandarinate have spoken, and all shall bow or take a kick in the head. Fascism, pure and simple, in your face. Pay up suckers.

I'm thinking a fellow could set up a 4G/WiMax mesh pretty quick to get high bandwidth video out of an area where the phones and internet are cut off. If a Pringles can on a stick will get you WiFi (802.11) reception over a couple miles, I don't doubt a properly constructed WiMax antenna could reach 20 miles or more. It would be cake to set up temporary coverage of a city or rural area using Twitter or Facebook to arrange things, assuming one made the arrangements before the government shut down communications. Such coverage could be small enough to fit in a compact car trunk, and maybe even drive around while working. You could have unattended repeaters stuck on telephone poles, bounce things from one server to another to get around damaged or captured links...

Friday, January 28, 2011

22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet's global routing table. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers. Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.

Hours ahead of what are expected to be massive displays of anti-government ferment across the world's most populous Arab nation, the internet went dark in parts of Egypt early Friday, and text messaging appeared to be blocked.

Noting that "parts of Egypt" is considerably different than " Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses" and moving on...

By the way, did you know that OnStar can turn your OnStar-equipped GM car on remotely? It can also turn it -off- remotely. Did you know that California (and through them, all the USA) is trying to get remote-disable as a feature on the next generation of "pollution controls" for vehicles? Uh huh, they are. This would give them the ability to turn off every properly equipped car in a neighborhood, or on a certain highway, or in a whole city, a whole state, or even the whole damn country and internationally as well.

Not science fiction, nonono, it has already happened my friends.

That's one of the reasons why I have a 1964 car with a carburetor and points ignition as part of the Phantom vehicle fleet. Still need to get groceries during a "national emergency" y'know. I recommend y'all look into it, or at least find out which wire to cut on your new vehicle. Might save your bacon some day.

In the mean time, you might want to phone up your US Senator, as well as Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn) and Susan Collins (Rino-Maine), and KICK THEIR ASSES for trying to turn the free nation of America into a third world tyranny like Egypt.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Kelley Williams-Bolar was convicted of lying about her residency to get her daughters into a better school district. ... She was sentenced last week to 10 days in county jail and put on three years of probation.

Jail time for trying to skate around a school district? Seriously? They hired a private eye and everything to catch this woman. Why bother?

"I don't think they wanted money," Williams-Bolar said. "They wanted me to be an example."Presiding Judge Patricia Cosgrove acknowledged as much. "I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school districts," Cosgrove said.

Because apparatchiks don't like being ignored, is why.Behold the true face of socialism, my friends. Better to see it now than wait until the bread lines start.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

You can't go to the movies, you can't watch TV, you can't listen to the radio, you can't read the paper, you can't even buy a frackin' comic book. When I was a young man, I used to collect comic books. Then one day, I just... stopped. It wasn't fun anymore. Right around the time DC comics killed off Superman the first time, be about 1993. Every once in a loooong while I buy a Spiderman, Superman, Fantastic Four, X Men or whatever to see if its fun again.

In the most shocking death to hit the comic book industry since - well, the publisher knocked off Captain America four years ago - the fiery Johnny Storm goes out in a blaze of glory saving his young niece and nephew from an army of insect creatures in Fantastic Four #587, in stores Wednesday.

Nope.

What the hell is the problem with this company, can't they see their sales going in the toilet every year?

Jonathan Hickman, the current writer of the series, says it wasn't easy to extinguish a comic book legend.

"Johnny kind of represents a childlike idealism within the group," Hickman told the News. "And the story that we wanted to tell going forward from my first issue on the book and where I would like to end up, there came a point in the story where it served us to eliminate what was an eternal source of optimism in the world."

Oh, I see. Marvel has been taken over by nihilistic post-modern assholes. Well, that saved me four bucks I guess, eh?

There's almost 2000 comments on there right now, a few of which read like this one from RickP, 19 yr old from New Joisey "should never happen in any sport at any level.the coach should be terminated and barred from any and all youth sports "

The question that comes to my mind is, "Are you kidding me?" One team is such rubbish that the other team can score two times a minute for four quarters, and the GOOD TEAM comes in for abuse? That's freakin' retarded!

In a 2-1 ruling, the appellate panel said Emanuel does not meet the residency requirement of having lived in Chicago for a year prior to the election. The judges reversed a decision by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, which had unanimously agreed that Emanuel was eligible to run for mayor.

Last week, my colleague Brian Stelter reported that on Tuesday, the day after the pilot episode of "Skins" was shown on MTV, executives at the cable channel were frantically meeting to discuss whether the salacious teenage drama starring actors as young as 15 might violate federal child pornography statutes.

Senior executives are now considering additional editing for coming episodes, but that's a little like trying to lock the door after a naked 17-year-old has already busted out and gone running down the street, which is precisely what one of the characters does in Episode 3 — with a pill-enhanced erection, no less.

No really, shut it off. Its worse than there's nothing on. There is something on, and it could hurt you. Hopefully this kiddie porno flick will hurt some poobahs at Viacom and MTV, who seem to really need a visit to banckruptcy court and/or jail to slap some respect into them. If they can't do the right thing, at least we can make them deeply afraid to keep doing the wrong thing.

That's our trip to the RetardOsphere for today. Now returning you to reality.

Damn Sarah Palin and her damn crosshairs!!! Obviously we need more gun control!

But seriously, I haven't read the story yet, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that the bomber was some kind of Islamist, probably with Mohamed somewhere in his name.

Given the casualties, I'm also going to take a wild guess and predict he blew up in the airport security line, where everybody is packed in like sardines in a nice narrow area with concrete walls and ceiling. Reflects the shock waves, y'know.

That probably makes me a RACIST!!! I mean, it could have been an 82 year old ex-school teacher lady from Barrie Ontario who packed her wooden leg with C4. That's just as likely, right? I mean, it could happen...

Update: Well, I was wrong about the location, it blew up in baggage claim. However BBC and Reuters reports were both completely empty of any other information! They don't actually know that it was a suicide bomber, they made that part up. Islamic militants are "suspected".

Monday, January 17, 2011

Never let it be said that the Phantom Soapbox just points and laughs at the leftards. You've heard of Transparent Aluminum from Star Trek, and you've heard some guy actually did it for real because they are testing it for bulletproof windows.

Glass stronger and tougher than steel? A new type of damage-tolerant metallic glass, demonstrating a strength and toughness beyond that of any known material, has been developed and tested by a collaboration of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)and the California Institute of Technology. What's more, even better versions of this new glass may be on the way.

"These results mark the first use of a new strategy for metallic glass fabrication and we believe we can use it to make glass that will be even stronger and more tough," says Robert Ritchie, a materials scientist who led the Berkeley contribution to the research.

The new metallic glass is a microalloy featuring palladium, a metal with a high "bulk-to-shear" stiffness ratio that counteracts the intrinsic brittleness of glassy materials.

"Because of the high bulk-to-shear modulus ratio of palladium-containing material, the energy needed to form shear bands is much lower than the energy required to turn these shear bands into cracks," Ritchie says. "The result is that glass undergoes extensive plasticity in response to stress, allowing it to bend rather than crack."

Imagine fiberglass made out of that, my friends. Or how about metallic glass cables holding up a transparent bridge? Or maybe just really thin windows.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Today's culprit is freedom of speech, or at least the speech of the American right and its broadcast cheerleaders. Shock-jock radio presenters feed on biased television news to present a view of the world divided between goodies and baddies. The baddies are always on the brink of victory and must be confronted with virile aggression. Language that might not disturb a balanced mind can clearly stimulate and legitimise an unbalanced one.

Say again?

The vitriol and inaccuracy of the campaign against Obama's public health reforms last year were like those against abortion and homosexuality. To many Europeans, the echo across the Atlantic came from a people isolated from the outside world and unable to handle today's social and scientific progress. The debate was infused with nastiness and xenophobia, as if the US was a land composed of tribes bred only to hate the outside world, and often themselves.

Damn Americans are too stupid to be trusted with freedom! There oughta be a law!Maybe the Guardian will change their tune when they all have to get a license to practice journalism. Or not, possibly that's their aim. Anyway, my new response when a guy like this tells me to shut up is "Make me, pencil neck."

Saturday, January 15, 2011

"Well, time may tell. Mental illness can certainly isolate a family, but I'd barricade a bit too if I lived in Arizona. They're heavily armed, and their response to this incident has been to become way more heavily armed. (Sales of Glock handguns, the very weapon Mr. Loughner used, jumped 60 per cent after the shooting.)I sympathize with their sadness, certainly. But I think if I lived in Arizona, my patio would be underground."

In Arizona, several unarmed bystanders attacked Loughner bare handed, while he was still shooting, and managed to subdue him. In Arizona, several people with guns on their belts, private citizens all, ran -toward- the sound of gunfire and arrived in time to help subdue Loughner.

In Canada, an entire bus full of people ran away from one man with a knife. Just a knife mind you. They let him stab Tim McLean to death. Many, many stab wounds reportedly. They let him cut off McLean's head. And eat it. For hours.

So you might want to ask some Arizonans if they're willing to lower their standards and put up with you for a neighbor before buying a winter place.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Previous efforts in the 1990s to recover nuclei in cells from the skin and muscle tissue from mammoths found in the Siberian permafrost failed because they had been too badly damaged by the extreme cold.

But a technique pioneered in 2008 by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology, was successful in cloning a mouse from the cells of another mouse that had been frozen for 16 years.

Now that hurdle has been overcome, Akira Iritani, a professor at Kyoto University, is reactivating his campaign to resurrect the species that died out 5,000 years ago.

"Now the technical problems have been overcome, all we need is a good sample of soft tissue from a frozen mammoth," he told The Daily Telegraph.

I have long noted that words seem to mean different things to different people. The largest such difference is between conservative and liberals.To a conservative, "tone down the rhetoric" in politics would mean that one should restrict oneself to the actual facts, one should keep exchanges between candidates in public reasonably cordial or at least professional, and no swearing. Accusing your opponents of murder and terrorism, that would not be "toned down". That would be "freaking out", and very likely libelous.

However, that didn't stop these posters from appearing in San Francisco overnight. This one here, found in Hayes Valley on Grove between Laguna and Octavia, says: "Enrage them with fear until they feel justified in their violence."

"Gun control is too simple a phrase to define all the complications and nuances of it, frankly. In Arizona they have a wide open system. I would be nervous about going into a bar or restaurant in Arizona on a Saturday night where people can carry concealed without permits," Tom Brokaw said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." (via Noel at Newsbusters)

See, according to the Great Myth, it is gun owners who are supposed to be the fearful ones. But the truth is that liberals like Tom Brokaw are so filled with fear and loathing of their fellows that they are quite comfortable using the power of government to disarm and oppress the entire population. If I may translate for Mr. Brokaw, "The world is filled with stupid people, and stupid people must be CONTROLLED damnit. If we have to ban every gun and confiscate every bullet in the entire goddamn country, its a small price to pay for me to be able to have a drink on Saturday night in comfort." Thanks Tom. Nice to know the truth about it for once.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Vigorous and spirited public debates during elections are among our most cherished traditions. And after the election, we shake hands and get back to work, and often both sides find common ground back in D.C. and elsewhere. If you don't like a person's vision for the country, you're free to debate that vision. If you don't like their ideas, you're free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those "calm days" when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols? In an ideal world all discourse would be civil and all disagreements cordial. But our Founding Fathers knew they weren't designing a system for perfect men and women. If men and women were angels, there would be no need for government. Our Founders' genius was to design a system that helped settle the inevitable conflicts caused by our imperfect passions in civil ways. So, we must condemn violence if our Republic is to endure.

OH! BLOOD LIBEL! Dems bring a gun, Palin brings a tank! BOOM, baby!

I love Sarah Palin, she's frickin' fierce!

Go Tea Party!

Shut-update! ABC News further beclowns itself: "Sarah Palin, once again, has found a way to become part of the story. And she may well face further criticism for the timing and scope of her remarks." Found a way to become part of the story, are you fucking kidding me?

In response to Saturday's shooting spree in Tucscon, Rep. Peter King (R, N.Y.) has announced that he's planning on introducing legislation to make it illegal for American citizens to knowingly carry a firearm within 1,000 feet of a member of Congress.

Genius!Remember that name my friends, Peter King, R-N.Y. Unless that's a typo, y'all should get on the blower to Petey's office and the RNC and fill their ears with fire.

Given the recent tragedy in Arizona, as well as the start of the new Congress, I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few words with political friends in Vermont and throughout the country. I also want to thank the very many supporters who have begun contributing online to my 2012 reelection campaign at www.bernie.org. There is no question but that the Republican Party, big money corporate interests and right-wing organizations will vigorously oppose me. Your financial support now and in the future is much appreciated.

Remember that name my friends, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. Someday maybe one of us will be in a position to serve up a big ol' can of "You're FIRED!" on this P.O.S. Some things just should not be allowed to pass.

Monday, January 10, 2011

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in Congress, said Sunday the deadly shooting in Arizona should get the country thinking about what's acceptable to say publicly and when people should keep their mouths shut.

[snippage]

'Free speech is as free speech does,' he said. 'You cannot yell ‘fire' in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that.'

Clyburn used as an example a comment made by Sharron Angle, an unsuccessful U.S. senatorial candidate in Nevada, who said the frustrated public may consider turning to 'Second Amendment remedies' for political disputes unless Congress changed course.

Clyburn said the man accused of shooting Giffords did just that.

'He saw a Second Amendment remedy and that's what occurred here and there is no way not to make that connection,' Clyburn said."

Because you see, Jim Clyburn reads minds, and he just knows what the shooter was thinking!

Sunday, January 09, 2011

One of the fiercest gun-control advocates in Congress, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), pounced on the shooting massacre in Tucson Sunday, promising to introduce legislation as soon as Monday. ...

"My staff is working on looking at the different legislation fixes that we might be able to do and we might be able to introduce as early as tomorrow," McCarthy told POLITICO in a Sunday afternoon phone interview.

Gun control activists cried it was time to reform weapons laws in the United States, almost immediately after a gunman killed six and injured 14 more, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in Arizona on Saturday.

New twist, they are going to add some good, solid socialist shutuppery to the menu.

Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Brady, a Democrat from Philadelphia, told CNN that he also plans to take legislative action. He will introduce a bill that would make it a crime for anyone to use language or symbols that could be seen as threatening or violent against a federal official, including a member of Congress.

"Language or symbols that could be seen as threatening" according to a federal bureaucrat could get Mother Teresa chucked in jail.

So the plan is, you won't be able to shoot back and you won't be able to complain about it. Just thought y'all would like some names.

Sunday, January 02, 2011

Hungary is introducing on Saturday a controversial media law that critics say will turn the clock back and re-introduce totalitarian rule in the former Communist nation. Under the legislation, journalists can face huge fines if their coverage is deemed unbalanced. The controversy comes as Hungary takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union on Saturday.